“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“My past is everything I failed to be.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises.
Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was,
I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat.
I was never convinced of what I believed in.
I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.
Words were my only truth.
When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
“I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa
Born place: in Lisbon, Portugal
Born date June 13, 1888
See more on GoodReads
“porque el camino recto del amor, ya se guíe por sí mismo, ya sea guiado por otro, es comenzar por las bellezas inferiores y elevarse hasta la belleza suprema, pasando, por decirlo así, por todos los grados de la escala de un solo cuerpo bello a dos, de dos a todos los demás, de los bellos cuerpos a las bellas ocupaciones, de las bellas ocupaciones a las bellas ciencias, hasta que de ciencia en ciencia se llega a la ciencia por excelencia, que no es otra que la ciencia de lo bello mismo, y se concluye por conocerla tal como es en sí.”
― Plato, quote from The Symposium
“Esther, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you when you go. I don’t know how I can get along. What am I going to do?” And then I just expected her like always to say, “Well, Dad, let me tell you; here’s what you do, A B C.” But she said, “Come here.” She just hugged me; held me close, didn’t say anything, didn’t say anything. And I realize now that that was . . . that’s the best way to love someone. Hold them close, know that you’re loved, let it wash over you. We got to love her and she got to love us. Amen?”
― quote from This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl
“No," said Tuppence thoughtfully, "he didn't believe it. That's the curious part about speaking the truth. No one does believe it.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Secret Adversary
“I’d forgotten my identity as the world’s most pathetic superhero, become a Californian instead. ”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from The Fortress of Solitude
“GINNY: After I came out of hospital — everyone ignored me, shut me out — other than, that is, the boy who had everything — who came across the Gryffindor common room and challenged me to a game of Exploding Snap. People think they know all there is to know about you, but the best bits of you are — have always been — heroic in really quiet ways. My point is — after this is over, just remember if you could that sometimes people — but particularly children — just want someone to play Exploding Snap with.”
― John Tiffany, quote from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2
Collected Works: Wis...
The Voice on the Rad...
You Are Here: Discov...
Glory Season
The Iron Witch
Adventures in the Sc...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
